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‘Secret Campaign’ Used Thousands of New Yorkers’ Identities Without Consent to Influence Federal Policy + More
‘Secret Campaign’ Used Thousands of New Yorkers’ Identities Without Consent to Influence Federal Policy: NY AG
Some of the nation’s largest broadband companies funded a “secret campaign” that used the identities of millions of consumers without their consent to generate fake public comments and ultimately convince the federal government to repeal net neutrality in 2017, the New York Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday, announcing a $615,000 settlement.
New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday secured $615,000 from three companies — LCX, Lead ID and Ifficient — that her office found supplied millions of fake public comments to influence a 2017 proceeding by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to repeal net neutrality rules.
An investigation by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found that the fake comments used the identities of millions of consumers, including thousands of New Yorkers, without their knowledge or consent.
“Public comment opportunities are a chance for Americans to give their input on important government policies, and these companies abused that for their own selfish purposes,” James said in a statement. “No one should have their identity co-opted by manipulative companies and used to falsely promote a private agenda.”
EU Draft Legislation Will Ban AI for Mass Biometric Surveillance and Predictive Policing
The EU has taken a step closer to enforcing strong regulation of AI, drafting new safeguards that would prohibit a wide range of dangerous use cases.
These include prohibitions on mass facial recognition programs in public places and predictive policing algorithms that try to identify future offenders using personal data. The regulation also requires the creation of a public database of “high-risk” AI systems deployed by public and government authorities so that EU citizens can be informed about when and how they are being affected by this technology.
The law in question is a new draft of the EU’s AI Act, which was approved today by two key committees: the Internal Market Committee and the Civil Liberties Committee. These committees are comprised of MEPs (members of the European Parliament) who have been charged with overseeing the legislation’s development. They approved the finished draft with 84 votes in favor, seven against, and 12 abstentions.
Prince George’s May Sue Social Media Firms Over Students’ Mental Health
Prince George’s County Public Schools could be the latest district to take legal action against the social media companies behind Instagram, TikTok and other apps arguing they are contributing to a youth mental health crisis and should be held accountable.
The county’s board of education will decide Thursday night whether members want to move forward with retaining legal representation.
Several school systems, including Seattle Public Schools in January, have filed suit against the social media companies, and school districts in California, Pennsylvania and Florida have joined. In Maryland, public school systems in Cecil and Carroll counties are also suing.
Attorneys who could be retained wrote in a memo to the Prince George’s school system that the goal of the legal action is to achieve “meaningful recoveries” for the school districts that have been “on the frontlines of a nationwide youth mental health crisis” fueled by social media. They argue that research shows there is a “direct connection” between the youth mental health crisis and the rise of social media.
Senate Republican Unveils Bill to End Government Internet Censorship
Missouri GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt introduced legislation Wednesday that would outlaw government-requested censorship of lawful online speech — restarting discussion of how to accomplish the lofty goal after earlier ideas stalled.
Schmitt’s COLLUDE Act would strip Big Tech platforms of legal immunity for third-party content under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 if they cooperate with government demands to remove First Amendment-protected speech.
“Big Tech executives have no business acting as censors on behalf of the federal government, and accountability is coming for those who sought to silence those whom they disagreed with,” Schmitt said.
Although it faces an uphill climb in the Democrat-held Senate, Schmitt’s proposal offers a fresh idea for heading off federal efforts to police so-called disinformation on subjects such as COVID-19 and alleged political corruption, after repeated instances of censored perspectives later gaining broad acceptance as fact.
Inslee Rescinds COVID Vaccine Requirement for WA State Employees
Gov. Jay Inslee has rescinded a requirement that Washington state employees receive vaccinations for COVID-19, ending one of the strictest such mandates in the country. Inslee made the announcement Wednesday morning, saying the state will no longer require current or prospective employees to show proof of vaccination.
Unlike many other states that imposed vaccine requirements, Washington’s mandate did not allow workers to take regular coronavirus tests in lieu of receiving the vaccines.
While Inslee’s mandate was followed by the vast majority of government employees, more than 2,100 workers who refused to be vaccinated were fired or resigned, according to the state Office of Financial Management.
The Washington Federation of State Employees, which represents nearly 47,000 public-service workers, posted an online message to members noting that the Inslee administration is making those who lost their jobs due to the vaccine mandate “apply, interview, and openly compete” for government positions.
Evolutionary Transhumanism: The End of Our Species as We Know It?
This subject will likely be very foreign to most, will be avoided by many, and will certainly offend those clinging to a god or religion in hopes of gaining everlasting life, by accepting certain dogma laid down in the past by ancient beliefs, religions, churches, monarchs, or rulers.
Those who depend on what is currently called ‘science,’ may be more interested, but will normally fail to see as clearly as they might, the true ramifications of this world being created today. The saying, “living in interesting times,” takes on a new meaning given our circumstances, and the great ‘advancement’ of ‘artificial intelligence,’ technological discovery, and the drive for global dominance, all happening at the same time.
In order to have gotten to this level of ‘thinking’ by the many, man’s achievements, supposed morality, history, and societal norms, had to be destroyed and demoralized, so that artificial life would be sought and desired by the herd. Given all that is happening, the absolute hatred and division that is evident, the loss of freedom, the insane drive for global dominance, and the mass belief in sameness and equality, all at the expense of others, and life itself, one cannot help but see the writing on the wall.
In order to achieve this fully controlled, technological, computerized non-human world, a world where robotic existence is deemed necessary and essential for survival, the mindset of the herd must be altered to such an extent, as to reach a level where the abandonment of this species is accepted as beneficial.
EXCLUSIVE: Congressman Urges Biden Administration to End Healthcare COVID Vaccine Mandate
President Joe Biden’s administration should immediately end its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, a top congressman said on May 10.
The COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) is ending just after midnight on May 12. Several COVID-19 vaccine mandates are ending at the same time. But it’s not clear when the mandate imposed by the Department of Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) is ending, prompting the new letter from Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.).
The White House said recently that HHS would be “start[ing] the process” to end the healthcare worker mandate. But no end date was given.
The congressman noted that there are serious healthcare worker shortages that have grown worse during the pandemic. Causes include the mandate and burnout.
South Korea to Lift Quarantine Mandate for COVID and End Testing Recommendation for Travelers
South Korea will drop its COVID-19 quarantine requirements and end testing recommendations for international arrivals starting next month after the World Health Organization declared the end of the global health emergency.
The decision was announced during a meeting attended by President Yoon Suk Yeol, where he thanked the country’s medical workers and said it was “delightful that people are getting their normal lives back after three and a half years.”
He said his government will take steps to improve the country’s capacity to deal with future pandemics, including providing stronger support for vaccine developments and expanding international cooperation.
We Know So Little About How Social Media Affects Kids’ Brains + More
We Know So Little About How Social Media Affects Kids’ Brains
The American Psychological Association has issued its first advisory on social media use in adolescence. What’s most striking in its data-based recommendations is how little we really know about how these apps affect our kids.
The relative newness of platforms like Snapchat and TikTok means little research is available about their long-term effects on teen and tween brains. Getting better data will require significant funding — and much more transparency from tech companies.
Perhaps a lack of clear data is one reason that so much of the conversation around social media and kids leans on our personal experiences and attitudes. And so much of the available data is murky: There’s plenty of correlative evidence that platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram can have a negative effect on kids’ development, but very little causal data.
That doesn’t mean that our assumptions about social media’s deleterious effects on kids aren’t true, or that parents don’t have cause to worry. But it has led to an all-or-nothing discourse that often ignores the reality that social media isn’t going away.
Biden Revokes COVID Travel, Federal Employee Vaccine Requirements
President Joe Biden on Tuesday revoked requirements that most international visitors to the United States be vaccinated against COVID-19 as well as similar rules for federal employees and contractors.
Biden’s orders take effect at 12:01 a.m. ET May 12 with the expiration of the U.S. COVID public health emergency. The Biden administration’s rules imposed in September 2021 requiring about 3.5 million federal employees and contractors to be vaccinated or face firing or disciplinary action have not been enforced for over a year after a series of court rulings.
The White House announced the plan last week to end the last of the extraordinary public health restrictions first adopted in 2020 that at one point barred most of the world’s population from entering the United States.
The Homeland Security Department will also no longer require non-U.S. travelers entering the United States via land ports of entry and ferries to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide proof upon request.
Biden Admin Creates New Disinformation Office to Oversee the Rest
With the Biden administration elevating disinformation to a national security threat, as codified in its first-of-its-kind National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, published in June 2021, new government (and non-government) offices dedicated to fighting foreign disinformation are cropping up everywhere.
To oversee organizations like the Pentagon’s new Influence and Perception Management Office and at least four organizations inside the Department of Homeland Security alone, the Director of National Intelligence has created a new office — the Foreign Malign Influence Center, The Intercept reports.
Established on September 23 of last year after Congress provisioned funding, the FMIC was only announced publicly after The Intercept inquired. The group, operating under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), “enjoys the unique authority to marshal support from all elements of the U.S. intelligence community to monitor and combat foreign influence efforts such as disinformation campaigns,” according to the report.
That said, it isn’t just monitoring foreign threats … as the FMIC is also authorized to monitor “the public opinion within the United States.”
“It’s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from Congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance,” Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi wrote Friday. “Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets.”
Docs Warn About AI’s ‘Existential Threat to Humanity’
Artificial intelligence poses “an existential threat to humanity” akin to nuclear weapons in the 1980s and should be reined in until it can be properly regulated, an international group of doctors and public health experts warned Tuesday in BMJ Global Health.
What they’re saying: “With exponential growth in AI research and development, the window of opportunity to avoid serious and potentially existential harms is closing,” wrote the authors, among them experts from the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the International Institute for Global Health.
The big picture: The warning comes amid increasing calls for improved oversight of artificial intelligence from the likes of Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called godfather of AI, who announced he was quitting Google over his worries about threats from machine learning, PBS reports.
Zoom in: The physicians and public health experts say the healthcare community needs to sound the alarm “even as parts of our community espouse the benefits of AI in the fields of healthcare and medicine.”
They cite AI’s ability to rapidly analyze sets of data could be misused for surveillance and information campaigns to “further undermine democracy by causing a general breakdown in trust or by driving social division and conflict, with ensuing public health impacts.”
Ex-Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Launching New Show on Twitter
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson plans to launch a “new version” of his show on Twitter. Carlson announced the news in a three-minute video posted on the social media platform on Tuesday.
“Speech is the fundamental prerequisite for democracy. That’s why it’s enshrined in the first of our Constitutional amendments,” Carlson says in the video. “There aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world — the only one — is Twitter, where we are now.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk took to his platform Tuesday evening to respond to Carlson’s announcement and confirm that Twitter did not make any sort of deal for the new show.
Carlson, 53, parted ways with Fox News in April but remains under contract until January 2025. According to reports, Carlson will forfeit $25 million in severance from the network to start the new show. Earlier Tuesday, Carlson’s lawyer accused Fox News of fraud and breach of contract, according to Axios.
Calif. Top Court Reluctant to Hold Employers Liable for COVID Infections
Judges on California’s top state court on Tuesday said they were concerned that allowing employers to be sued when workers who contracted COVID-19 spread it to members of their households would unleash “an avalanche of litigation” against businesses.
The seven-member California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in San Francisco over whether woodworking company Victory Woodworks Inc could be held liable for negligence by Corby Kuciemba, an employee’s wife who says she became seriously ill when her husband contracted COVID at work in the early days of the pandemic in 2020 and passed it to her.
Even with the COVID global health emergency officially over, the court’s ruling in the case could have major implications for California businesses. It will apply to lawsuits that are currently pending, any new cases that fall within California’s two-year window to file negligence lawsuits, and potentially future claims involving other infectious diseases.
Clearview Fined Again in France for Failing to Comply With Privacy Orders
Clearview AI, the U.S. startup that’s attracted notoriety in recent years for a massive privacy violation after it scraped selfies off the Internet and used people’s data to build a facial recognition tool it pitched to law enforcement and others, has been hit with another fine in France over non-cooperation with the data protection regulator.
The overdue penalty payment of €5.2M has been issued by the French regulator, the CNIL — on top of a €20M sanction it slapped the company with last year for breaching regional privacy rules.
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sets out conditions for processing personal data lawfully. Clearview has been found to have breached a number of requirements set out in law — by France’s CNIL and several other regional data protection authorities, including authorities in the U.K., Italy and Greece, garnering several tens of millions in total fines to date.
Whether Clearview will ever pay any of these fines remains an open question, since the U.S.-based company has not been cooperating with EU regulators.
CEO of ChatGPT Maker OpenAI to Testify to Congress
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will testify to Congress for the first time next week, the latest sign that policymakers in Washington are ratcheting up scrutiny of artificial intelligence as the technology booms in Silicon Valley.
Altman, whose company is behind the AI-driven chatbot ChatGPT, will appear Tuesday before a Senate panel to discuss efforts to keep AI in check — efforts that include potential legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill.
The hearing comes as lawmakers and federal officials grapple with how to tackle the surging popularity of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, which pull information from massive data sets to generate words, images and sounds, including conversational responses to users’ queries.
The product’s rapid deployment has triggered an AI arms race in the tech industry and raised alarm among some AI ethicists and public officials, who fear the technology’s potential to spread misinformation, replace jobs or otherwise cause significant harm to users.
MEPs to Vote on Proposed Ban on ‘Big Brother’ AI Facial Recognition on Streets
Moves to ban live “Big Brother” real-time facial recognition technology from being deployed across the streets of the EU or by border officials will be tested in a key vote at the European parliament on Thursday.
The amendment is part of a package of proposals for the world’s first artificial intelligence laws, which could result in firms being fined up to €10m (£8.7m) or removed from trading within the EU for breaches of the rules.
But the ban, contained in a final text to be voted on in parliament on Thursday, is expected to be challenged by a group of center-right MEPs on the grounds that biometric scanning should be deployed to combat serious crimes such as terrorism.
It’s Time for Laws Limiting the Power of Public Health Institutions + More
It’s Time for Laws Limiting the Power of Public Health Institutions
Over the past three years, the public has seen first-hand the tremendous power the public health establishment wields. Using emergency power that most people never realized an American government possessed, public health violated Americans’ most fundamental civil rights in the name of infection control.
We endured three years of useless and divisive policies, including lockdowns, church and business closures, zoom schools, mask mandates and vaccine mandates and discrimination.
Now that the WHO has declared the end of the COVID pandemic and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has announced her resignation, it is time for states to take action to limit the power of public health so that a repeat never happens again.
Contrary to what you hear these days from those making poor decisions throughout the pandemic, many of the errors were not honest mistakes. Public health embraced positions at odds with the scientific evidence throughout the pandemic, for instance, by pretending that immunity after COVID recovery does not exist, and by overstating the ability of the vaccine to stop COVID infection and transmission. Despite many getting vaccinated, COVID spread and people died anyway, with tremendous collateral harm — both economic and in terms of public health — deriving from the favored policies of our public health institutions.
Students Can’t Get Off Their Phones. Schools Have Had Enough.
When students returned to school during the pandemic, educators quickly saw a change in their cellphone habits. More than ever, they were glued to their devices during class — posting on social media, searching YouTube, texting friends.
So this year, schools in Ohio, Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia, California and others banned the devices in class to curb student obsession, learning disruption, disciplinary incidents and mental health worries.
The stakes are higher after the COVID years, with many districts behind academically up to a year or more and doing all they can to help students catch up. Some have come to see social media — accessed via students’ phones — as a major contributor to poor mental health. A string of school systems has filed suit against the platforms.
New Social Media Recommendations for Teens Focus on Preventing Harm
A new report from the American Psychological Association (APA) gives parents of adolescents information that is often hard to find: an up-to-date, thorough list of recommendations for social media use. Included in the APA’s 10 recommendations are commonsense tips, like reasonably monitoring social media use, limiting time spent so that it doesn’t interfere with sleep and exercise, and minimizing use for social comparison, particularly related to beauty- and appearance-related content.
The report also highlights the importance of regularly screening pre-teens and teens for “problematic” social media use as well as offering social media literacy training to help them develop skills like questioning the accuracy of the content they see and understanding tactics for spreading misinformation.
Written by a panel of experts who focus on adolescent mental health, the recommendations are meant to reach policymakers, educators, mental health clinicians, technology companies, and teens, in addition to parents and caregivers.
Though the authors mention the role that product design choices like notifications and algorithms play in amplifying certain types of content and engagement, they do not take a position on regulating social media companies, as some critics and politicians have done.
Subpoenaed Alphabet Documents Improperly Redacted, May Not Be Complete, Jordan Says
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday sent a letter to Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, urging full compliance with a subpoena requiring the production of unredacted documents pertaining to the company’s communications with the executive branch.
In the letter, Jordan said the company released insufficient information, producing only 4,049 pages of material with key details redacted “despite explicit instructions” not to do so.
Jordan said he expects Alphabet to submit all requested documents without redactions by May 22, including some that he believes are in the company’s possession but haven’t been released.
Alphabet is one of several tech companies — including Amazon, Apple and Meta — the committee subpoenaed in February for “reported collusion with the federal government … to suppress free speech.”
TechScape: AI is Feared to be Apocalyptic or Touted as World-Changing — Maybe It’s Neither
What if AI doesn’t fundamentally reshape civilization? This week, I spoke to Geoffrey Hinton, the English psychologist-turned-computer scientist whose work on neural networks in the 1980s set the stage for the explosion in AI capabilities over the last decade. Hinton wanted to speak to deliver a message to the world: he is afraid of the technology he helped create.
Hinton is not the first big figure in AI development to sound the alarm, and he won’t be the last. The undeniable — and accelerating — improvement in the underlying technology lends itself easily to visions of unending progress. The clear possibility of a flywheel effect, where progress itself begets further progress, adds to the potential. Researchers are already seeing good results, for instance, on using AI-generated data to train new AI models, while others are incorporating AI systems into everything from chip design to data-center operations.
But I’m more interested in the middle ground. Most technologies do not end the world. (In fact, so far, humanity has a 100% hit rate for not destroying itself, but past results may not be indicative of future performance.) Many technologies do change the world. How might that middle ground shake out for AI?
Melbourne Public Housing Tower Residents Offered $5M Payout Over COVID Lockdown
Thousands of residents forced into a sudden COVID-19 lockdown in public housing towers in Melbourne in 2020 are set to collectively reap $5m in compensation.
The Victorian government has settled a class action over measures intended to stop an outbreak of the virus in nine towers at the height of the second wave.
The plaintiffs claim people were wrongly detained for up to 14 days and threatened with physical harm if they tried to leave the towers, though the state of Victoria denied those claims.
The government has repeatedly refused to apologize to the residents despite the state’s complaints watchdog recommending one was in order for the harm and distress caused by the suddenness of the lockdown.
MWC Organizers Fined Over GDPR Biometric Security Concerns
The GSMA, the organizers behind Barcelona’s annual Mobile World Congress (MWC), have been fined €200 million for not carrying out a data protection impact assessment (DPIA).
Per TechCrunch, the decision delivered in Spanish by the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) found that the GSMA fell short when failing to account for biometric data collected from attendees, partially as a result of BREEZZ — an optional, automated identity verification system permitting entry to the event.
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires that a robust DPIA be carried out when data collection may pose a “high risk” to the right to privacy of those affected. Biometric facial recognition technology falls into this category in this case because said data was used to identify MWC attendees.
The AEPD also ruled that the GSMA collected passports and EU identity documentation from attendees, and required them to consent to biometric data collection as part of the upload process.
AI Cameras Are Being Set Up on Highways to Catch Drivers Who Throw Trash Out of Their Car Windows
AI cameras are being set up on some U.K. highways to stop drivers from throwing trash out of their car windows. The AI-powered cameras will be installed in British lay-bys in the coming weeks in an attempt to catch drivers who litter, The Metro reported. Offenders could be fined up to £100, or $126, according to the news outlet.
The cameras would be able to automatically send the images to enforcers, meaning officers would no longer have to look through hours of CCTV footage, the publication added.
AI cameras are already being used to monitor other aspects of driving. In February, an Amazon driver shared how the company’s AI camera system is used to monitor drivers during delivery shifts. The driver shared a TikTok explaining how the camera can be used to flag delivery drivers for doing anything from taking a sip of coffee to failing to buckle their seatbelts enough times.
Online Predators’ Favorite Target? Your Kids’ Webcams. + More
Online Predators’ Favorite Target? Your Kids’ Webcams.
There has been a tenfold increase in sexual abuse imagery created with webcams and other recording devices worldwide since 2019, according to the Internet Watch Foundation.
Social media sites and chatrooms are the most common methods used to facilitate contact with kids, and abuse occurs both online and offline. Increasingly, predators are using advances in technology to engage in technology-facilitated sexual abuse.
We are criminologists who study cybercrime and cybersecurity. Our current research examines the methods online predators use to compromise children’s webcams. To do this, we posed online as children to observe active online predators in action.
We began by creating several automated chatbots disguised as 13-year-old girls. We deployed these chatbots as bait for online predators in various chatrooms frequently used by children to socialize. The bots never initiated conversations and were programmed to respond only to users who identified as over 18 years of age.
The Global Battle to Regulate AI Is Just Beginning
At the core of the debate about regulating AI is the question of whether it’s possible to limit the risks it presents to societies without stifling the growth of a technology that many politicians expect to be the engine of the future economy.
The discussions about risks should not focus on existential threats to the future of humanity, because there are major issues with the way AI is being used right now, says Mathias Spielkamp, cofounder of AlgorithmWatch, a nonprofit that researches the use of algorithms in government welfare systems, credit scores, and the workplace, among other applications. He believes it is the role of politicians to put limits on how the technology can be used.
“Take nuclear power: You can make energy out of it or you can build bombs with it,” he says “The question of what you do with AI is a political question. And it is not a question that should ever be decided by technologists.”
The lobbying by Big Tech companies, including Alphabet and Microsoft, is something that lawmakers worldwide will need to be wary of, says Sarah Myers West, managing director of the AI Now Institute, another think tank. “I think we’re seeing an emerging playbook for how they’re trying to tilt the policy environment in their favor,” she says.
TikTok Answered Hundreds of Lawmakers’ Questions. Here Are the Highlights.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced an onslaught of questions when he testified before the House in March, but his congressional grilling did not end there. After the hearing, lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee peppered Chew with hundreds more written follow-up questions, ranging in topic from TikTok’s ties to China to its handling of children’s safety.
TikTok responded in a 54-page letter to the panel released Friday, where it pushed back on suggestions it could be influenced by the Chinese government, tackled concerns about its privacy practices and disclosed more details about its moderation efforts.
Seeking to address lawmaker fears that it could be used as a surveillance tool, TikTok said it “does not collect any face or voice information that would enable us to identify a unique individual.” The company also said it no longer collects “precise or approximate GPS information from U.S. users,” though older versions of the app as late as August 2020 did.
TikTok disputed Rep. Gus Bilirakis’s (R-Fla.) claim that its algorithm sends teenage users “sad, depressing and suicide-promoting videos,” saying it was not “an accurate sentiment” and that it prohibits content “promoting, normalizing, or glorifying activities that could lead to suicide.”
Teachers Union Slams House GOP Over ‘Fishing Expedition’
Lawyers for the American Federation of Teachers on Friday condemned the Republican-led COVID-19 oversight panel’s request for their president’s phone records as an “improper” expansion of its investigation.
House lawmakers are investigating the deliberations around pandemic-spurred school closures and the CDC’s February 2021 school reopening guidance. On Thursday, House Coronavirus Pandemic Select Subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup penned a letter pressing AFT President Randi Weingarten to turn over phone and text records for any communication between the CDC, the Biden transition team and the Executive Office of the President.
AFT Counsel Michael Bromwich wrote to the panel on Friday, “We will simply not accede to these unreasonable requests.”
Republicans have long sparred with teachers’ unions, but the pandemic exacerbated tension as schools remained closed while school teachers pushed for more safety protocols to return to the classroom. GOP lawmakers have since characterized AFT and other teachers’ unions as having undue influence over the nation’s school reopening plan.
It’s 2023 and Patients Are Still Being Denied Medical Treatment Because of COVID Vaccines
The Epoch Times reported on April 23 the appalling case of a 41-year-old Georgia woman who has been rejected for a kidney transplant, even though she is on dialysis and potentially facing death. The seriousness of her condition necessitates her undergoing dialysis three times per week to keep her life.
The reason for such a rejection? The woman, who has already had COVID-19, refuses to receive the COVID-19 vaccine on religious and medical grounds. Regardless of her acquired natural immunity, Doe, a mother of seven young children, has not obtained an exemption from the COVID-19 vaccinations, although serious issues associated with vaccinating someone with mRNA inoculation were one of the primary bases of her medical objections.
Similarly, here in Australia, another mother has been denied the opportunity to receive a lifesaving organ transplant. Vicki Derdarian, a mother of three, suffered from heart failure in 2020 and is now in desperate need of a lifesaving heart transplant. And yet, she has been turned away by Alfred Hospital in Melbourne because of vaccine mandates that are still enforced by the government of Victoria.
This Is the Solution to the COVID Learning Loss Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic brought on a flood of loss — of lives, of jobs and, in a less-discussed tragedy, of learning. Students are still suffering the effects of the months and even years spent away from the classroom. The longer schools dawdle in catching them up, the less chance they have of succeeding.
The problem was not just that some students lacked internet access; it was also that online learning, the evidence suggests, did not work as well as in-person instruction. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, an evaluation commonly referred to as the nation’s report card, came in last year with alarmingly low marks for the country’s children: Two decades’ worth of progress in math and reading among 9-year-olds was gone.
Eighth-graders’ math scores fell in 49 of 50 states. Worse, those already the furthest behind fell behind further still. Black and Hispanic students, as well as students in high-poverty districts, suffered particularly. The longer kids took classes remotely, the worse the numbers look.
These declines matter. Already, there has been a national dip in college enrollment among recent graduates — in single digits overall but almost 30% the year the pandemic began among low-income students. A study by a Stanford University economist estimates that pandemic-related learning loss could reduce lifetime earnings by an average of $70,000.
High-dosage tutoring is essential to make up for the learning loss COVID-19 has wrought. It could also help ensure future students don’t lose so much, to begin with.
EU Lawyers Say Plan to Scan Private Messages for Child Abuse May Be Unlawful
An EU plan under which all WhatsApp, iMessage and Snapchat accounts could be screened for child abuse content has hit a significant obstacle after internal legal advice said it would probably be annulled by the courts for breaching users’ rights.
Under the proposed “chat controls” regulation, any encrypted service provider could be forced to survey billions of messages, videos and photos for “identifiers” of certain types of content where it was suspected a service was being used to disseminate harmful material.
The providers issued with a so-called “detection order” by national bodies would have to alert police if they found evidence of suspected harmful content being shared or the grooming of children.
Privacy campaigners and service providers have already warned that the proposed EU regulation and a similar online safety bill in the U.K. risk end-to-end encryption services such as WhatsApp disappearing from Europe.
EU Expected to Delay Fingerprinting and Facial Recognition Checks at Dover
The EU is expected to delay introducing fingerprinting and facial recognition checks in Dover amid fears it could mar travel to next year’s summer Olympics in Paris.
The move, which will be discussed by the EU in June, would come as a relief to coach operators and transport bosses, whose passengers endured delays of up to 14 hours at Easter trying to go to Calais, and who feared “pandemonium” if fingerprinting were added to passport checks at Dover, Eurotunnel in Folkestone and the Eurostar terminal in London.
Under the new entry and exit system (EES) the EU planned to introduce in November, passengers would have to agree to fingerprinting and facial image capture the first time they arrived on the continent. After that, the data, including any record of refused entry, should allow quicker processing, said John Keefe, the head of public affairs at Eurotunnel.